Blessed Are the Dead

by Malla Nunn

  Daglish greeted each stare with a cheery, “Hello. Lovely day.” She was worn thin by the time they reached the cottage and fled indoors with a quick wave good-bye.

  Emmanuel led Shabalala and Zweigman to the back of the house and found a shade tree to stand under. They were out of sight of the police station and the people on the street. “I’ve been ordered off the Amahle Matebula murder investigation,” he said.

  “And yet here we stand,” Zweigman said. “Making plans to find her, I imagine.”

  “I’ve been removed,” Emmanuel stated. “But not Shabalala. He stays on active duty.”

  “That cannot be right, Sergeant.” The Zulu detective was visibly uncomfortable with the direction the conversation was taking. “A native constable cannot lead an investigation. It is against the rules.”

  “Ellicott and Hargrave will lead the investigation. You’ll work parallel to them, taking statements and interviewing suspects. I’ll drive.” Now that it was said aloud he realized the idea was ridiculous. Colonel van Niekerk was right. He was a hungry beast, never satisfied.

  “What are you really saying, Sergeant?” Shabalala studied the drift of low clouds crowning the hills and avoided eye contact with his superior officer. This was a tricky situation, asking for the plain truth from a white man.

  “Technically we’re both off the case. But the general who gave the order didn’t mention you specifically. That’s the loophole. We stay and continue the investigation with van Niekerk’s unofficial approval.”

  “If we fail and are caught?” Shabalala asked. The clouds were moving fast, throwing shadows over the fields and wild-flowers.

  “The colonel will wash his hands of me and look the other way.” The next part was difficult to say. “You’re a native policeman. That will keep you safe. If you’re questioned by a disciplinary board, pretend ignorance and tell them you had no idea of General Hyland’s order.”

  “Play the stupid native, you mean.” Zweigman was offended on Shabalala’s behalf. “Confirm everything that the National Party government preaches about lower intelligence and lack of initiative being bred into black people.”

  Emmanuel said, “That’s right.”

  A tense silence followed. Zweigman fumed while Shabalala dug the tip of his sandshoe into the dirt. Minutes ticked by. Emmanuel said nothing. The sun broke through the clouds and he stepped out of the shade to warm his face. He needed Shabalala and Zweigman. Without them the clandestine investigation was guaranteed to fail.

  Shabalala pushed his toe deeper into the soil and said, “If we are caught, I must keep myself small and quiet and say only ‘I don’t know, ma’ baas’?”

  “Yes. Can you do it?”

  “Easily.” Shabalala stepped out of the shade and into the sun. The chill from the night spent on the mountainside was still in his bones. “The new detectives will not be happy to see us.” That was the polite way of asking how they were going to avoid a physical confrontation with Ellicott and Hargrave when they arrived.

  “Two black murders out in the sticks. They won’t rush.” Emmanuel checked his watch. Seven thirty-five a.m. “Earliest they’ll get here is this afternoon. Hargrave looks like a beer barrel and Ellicott has the brains of a sardine. If we stay more than five miles from the pub we won’t see them at all.”

  “These men will not find out who killed Amahle and Philani,” Shabalala said with bleak acceptance. It was impressive, the many ways that white men found to win a battle. They fought with telephones and people they knew, not with spears and shields.

  “Ellicott and Hargrave won’t find a thing.” Emmanuel snapped a branch of sagebrush and rubbed it between his palms. “That’s the point.”

  “This is to protect the schoolboy Gabriel.” Shabalala’s tone was one of understanding. A father must fight for his children and a chief for his clan. The English and the Zulus had that in common.

  “When Amahle is buried,” Emmanuel said, “her secrets will be buried with her.”

  Shabalala turned to face Greyling Street, which ran all the way to the valley and the foot of the mountains. “We must tell this to the chief and to Mandla,” he said.

  Zweigman stepped out of the shade. He had his hands thrust deep into his jacket pocket, his fingers curled around an object. The leather wallet, Emmanuel thought, the one with the photographs he was not allowed to see. The images must be powerful. Zweigman clutched the wallet as if it were a lucky charm.

  “Colonel van Niekerk will not catch us if we fall.” The doctor thumbed his gold-rimmed glasses higher onto the bridge of his nose and addressed the Zulu policeman directly. “Give me one good reason why either of us should join Detective Cooper’s unsanctioned campaign.”

  “Amahle,” Shabalala replied.

  “Good answer.”

  15

  FROM THE ROCK ledge, Covenant farmhouse looked like a white dot in the landscape. Emmanuel crouched down and motioned to Shabalala to begin his first-ever identification-of-human-remains interview.

  “Is that your son Philani Dlamini under the rock shelter?” Shabalala asked a plump Zulu woman dressed in black widow’s robes. She sat on her heels, head down, hands folded in her lap.

  “Yes, inkosi. It is he. Philani.” She was stoic. Squatting below her on the track were three men from her uncle’s kraal come to transport the body. “I knew it would be him.”

  “Why is this?” Shabalala asked.

  Philani’s mother loosened the strings of a small goatskin pouch tied to her black hide skirt and scooped out the contents: four bright copper coins and a paper note.

  “My son came home on Friday night,” she said. “I did not tell the great chief the truth because Philani said it must be a secret. He gave me this money to hide and the sky pressed down on my chest. I could not breathe. I knew a bad thing would happen to my son. It was not his payday.”

  Emmanuel counted the notes and coins. Close to two pounds, the amount that Amahle was paid on Friday, minus a few bob. It might be a coincidence. It might not.

  “Perhaps Philani was holding the money for a friend,” Shabalala said.

  “This money was not given. It was taken.” She placed the cash on the rock and wiped her hands on her skirt to clean them. “My son was scared when he came home with this money and told me to keep it hidden. It is cursed.”

  Robbing the dead. Emmanuel knew soldiers, souvenir collectors, who stripped enemy corpses of boots, guns, knives and even gold teeth. Philani might have been angry enough to kill Amahle for walking home without him, but robbery didn’t fit with this kind of crime of passion.

  “You say that Philani was scared.” Shabalala found a rock and weighted the money down, careful not to touch it.

  “Yebo. He instructed me to go to the great chief and say that he was missing. Then he said to take the money and go to the kraal of my uncle.” She looked over her shoulder at the stand of marula trees blocking the rock shelter from view. “Philani told me he would come to the kraal today.”

  Emmanuel scrawled down what she’d said. Philani had been hiding, not running away. He made plans for the future. He had no intention of dying alone on a hillside. Three cold nights sleeping on a rock, waiting for what? Hunted men kept on the move. Philani chose a spot, lit night fires and stayed. It didn’t make sense.

  “Philani was a friend of the great chief’s daughter,” Shabalala said. “This is what I hear.”

  “My son was a friend to her, inkosi. That is the truth.” The soft words carried a bitterness that she dared not express outright. A widow without the protection of a son did not criticize the daughter of a chief, even if the girl was dead.

  “I hear you,” Shabalala said. The friendship between Philani and Amahle was one-sided. Philani had been the better friend. “Is there more to say?”

  “I am finished.”

  A bell tolled in the valley, calling the workmen from the fields. Emmanuel checked the grove of trees for movement. They were due at the Covenant homestead fifteen minutes afte
r the bell. He stood and crossed the flat surface of the rock, heading in the direction of the trees. Zweigman emerged from the underbrush in a white gown and gloves loaned by Dr. Daglish. His battered medical bag was tucked under an arm. “It was not easy,” he whispered to Emmanuel. “But I found one very interesting thing.”

  “Save it for the walk back to Covenant. And try not to look so pleased with yourself.”

  “Yes, of course.” Zweigman hunched into the surgical gown and pretended interest in a red flower growing from a crevice. “Finish your business. I will stay here.”

  The finish of business was short and sad. Philani’s mother stayed crouched in her black widow’s robes, dwarfed by a canopy of sky. “With your permission,” she said, “I will take my son home now.”

  “With our blessing,” Shabalala replied, and they withdrew to the edge of the grove where Zweigman waited. The Zulu men rose from the bush path and crossed the rock with woven grass mats balanced on their shoulders. “For the body,” Shabalala explained.

  Emmanuel waited until the bearers were well into the woods before hitting the path to Covenant.

  “I have news, gentlemen,” Zweigman said as they walked down the hill. “It took a while, but I found it.” He held out a gloved hand. A fragment of porcupine quill rested in the palm. “It was pierced into the lower lumbar. Same as with the girl.”

  “Same killer,” Emmanuel said. “Got to be.”

  “To use this weapon you must get near to the person.” Shabalala rubbed his chin, thinking. “Either walking close behind them or with your arms around their body.”

  “Hard for a stranger to achieve. Easy for a friend.” That fit with Emmanuel’s feeling that Philani had invited the killer into the rock shelter, confident of his own safety. They continued the descent of the mountain at a brisk pace for fifteen minutes. They did not want to miss their escort to Amahle’s funeral.

  Inside the yard, a caravan had formed. Four workmen clumped together behind Sampie and Karin. Three women, including the undersized housemaid with the failing eyes, took up position behind them. The boerboel pack lay on the stoep, their giant heads resting on their paws and under orders to “stay.”

  “Detective Cooper,” Sampie called a greeting. “Thought you’d changed your mind.”

  “Got caught up on the hill.” Emmanuel joined father and daughter at the head of the procession. Karin nodded hello and fiddled with the cuffs of her ironed going-out shirt. “Sorry to keep you waiting,” he said. “We appreciate the invitation to walk with your house.”

  Sampie grunted and they set off along the trail churned up by wagons. Sunshine hit the gravestones in the family plot and birds sang from the tall grass. Shabalala and Zweigman walked a pace behind Emmanuel.

  “It was the gardener on the hill,” Karin said. “So, I guessed right.”

  “You did.” Philani’s location was more than a lucky guess. The stranger lighting night fires on the property must surely have caught Karin’s attention. “His mother is arranging the burial.”

  “Poor thing. Nobody will turn up at the funeral. They’re scared of the chief.” Karin unbuttoned her cuffs and rolled up her sleeves, unused to the feeling of starched linen against her skin. “Plus there’s all this going on.”

  Four Zulu women with babies tied to their backs waited for the procession to pass, then tagged along with the other women on the end. Still more people waited by the river crossing.

  “How many by the time we get there?” Emmanuel asked.

  The Afrikaner woman shrugged. “Fifty or so. The kaffirs from the kraals all around will join along the way.”

  This massing of people was the reason Emmanuel, Zweigman and Shabalala had stayed away from the Matebula family compound this morning. Amahle’s funeral was equivalent to a tornado tearing across the valley; it could not be stopped or delayed. Sampie Paulus’s invitation for them to walk to the great chief’s home meant they could witness her farewell as well as observe who came to pay their respects.

  The group of Zulus at the river crossing swelled the numbers. Sampie Paulus led the way across the water, stepping from one flat stone to the next like an Afrikaner Moses. He waited till the entire group reached the bank and then set off again.

  “Ever been to a kaffir funeral before, Detective Cooper?” Karin brushed sand from the hem of her good jeans.

  “Town funerals,” he said. “Nothing like this.”

  “Be prepared,” Karin said. “It’ll be noisy.”

  The Matebula kraal came into view, nestled in a field of aloes. Wails and screams drifted from the compound and the women in the procession began to wail, too. The men split away and formed their own group. The pounding rhythm of their feet hitting the ground added to the sound.

  “See what I mean?” Karin stepped aside to give the Zulu procession right-of-way. “Your kaffir and the other one can stand with us. There’s a special area for nonfamily near the burial site.”

  “Zweigman and Shabalala.” Emmanuel said their names, knowing it was pointless. Karin’s world was divided into two groups: white people, who mattered, and servants. Jews occupied a messy space between the two clusters.

  Sampie cut across the field to the front entrance of the Matebula kraal. Scores of Zulus gathered. Dozens more arrived from the mountain paths, raising trails of dust. The kraal dogs barked amid the excitement.

  “We’re in the specially marked area,” Emmanuel said when Shabalala and Zweigman caught up. “Stick close to Sampie. We weren’t formally invited but the Matebulas live on his land.”

  The group entered the compound and a Zulu man indicated where they should stand. The special enclosure held a sprinkling of whites: two missionary women in ironed black dresses and hats, a red-faced farmer in clean khaki, and Thomas and Ella Reed. Constable Bagley was a no-show.

  “Afternoon.” Emmanuel tipped his hat to the other guests: some nodded and smiled in return. Thomas Reed stepped up. His black suit was elegant but his expression was savage. “What are you doing here, Cooper?” He spoke close to Emmanuel’s ear, careful to avoid a public scene. “I will have your police ID for this.”

  “I’m a private citizen attending a private funeral. There’s no law against it. Call General Hyland and check.”

  Shabalala and Zweigman closed ranks behind Emmanuel, one at each shoulder. Reed blinked hard but a natural sense of superiority kicked in. He kept his composure: a tick for a King’s Row College education. “You’re in trouble, Cooper,” he said. “Your friends as well. This time next week the three of you will be queuing up at the labor office looking for factory work.”

  Emmanuel stared into Reed’s eyes, almost curious at the man’s stupidity and his sense of entitlement.

  “A factory job. That’s your idea of hell?” he asked. “Have you ever had to fight for anything in your life? You can’t even fight your own battle right here, right now.” Reed opened his mouth to speak but Emmanuel’s expression silenced him.

  Sampie Paulus came over. “Squabble afterwards,” he said. “This is not the place. The ceremony has started.”

  “My apologies for the disturbance.” Emmanuel moved to the thorn fence. He regretted reacting to Reed. Fighting at a funeral was something his schoolboy self would have done.

  Dozens of Zulu mourners took up the ground between the spectators’ enclosure and the grave, which had been dug by the side of Nomusa’s hut. Nomusa and her surviving daughter were seated on grass mats in the female mourners’ area: distant phantoms in the dust. Bodies pressed in on the great chief’s family. The women wailed and threw their hands into the air, the men stamped the ground. More dust rose and it was hard to see. The noise increased.

  The great chief emerged from his hut and walked around the inner ring of the kraal. An old man preceded him, a praise singer, who listed the chief’s victories, wealth and children. The missionary women moved closer to the fence, engrossed in the native funeral rites. Shabalala craned over the crowd, squinting into the sunlight. “That grave
does not look right,” he said.

  Emmanuel shifted position and found a space between two adolescent boys that allowed a partial view of the freshly dug earth. “Hard to tell,” he said. “There’s a lot going on.”

  “The grave is not right, Sergeant,” the Zulu detective stated. “It is not right.”

  The praise singer moved closer, shouting more of the great chief’s attributes. Mandla and his impi moved in a sinuous rhythm at the front of a column of fighting-age males.

  The mourners parted. A group of men carried a cowhide stretcher bearing Amahle’s body to the grave. The women’s wailing increased and grew sharp. The hair on the back of Emmanuel’s neck stood up. He pressed forward. The body was wrapped in cowhide and bound by plaited grass ropes. Three branches, stripped of bark and wedged into the hide, held the corpse in a grotesque sitting position.

  “What’s going on?” Emmanuel asked Shabalala.

  The women were howling now, their arms thrown up to the sky. Nomusa jumped to her feet but a ring of matrons pulled her back and anchored her to the ground with their weight. Two of the bearers wound lengths of rope around their hands and lowered Amahle’s upright body into the grave.

  “Bad things are happening, Sergeant. Only those who have caused great offense in life, criminals and murderers, are buried sitting up. Amahle’s spirit will not find rest until she is laid down.”

  “Eternal punishment?” Emmanuel said. “For failing to deliver the herd of cows her father wanted?”